The Seagate Barracuda model has been recognized as a top flight hard drive. see Seagate / Barracuda 7200.10 / 500GB / 7200 / 8MB / ATA-100 / EIDE / OEM / 500 GB Hard Drive Review Gist . I would suggest, no matter which make you decide on, to have 2 hard drives. Drive C (master drive) would have the operating system (Win 7) and applications, the slave drive would save all data files you create. This not only makes access to data faster, but should Windows crash, your data won't be affected. Keep copies of drivers on slave drive as well, this makes reinstallation of windows less of a hassle. IMHO. Others may wish to add further advice, so stay tuned.